“All I will say is that, for three years, the president has been harvesting the successes of the very strategy that he consistently dismissed as a failure,” McCain said referring to the surge which then senator Obama opposed in 2007. “I imagine this irony was not lost on a few of our troops at Fort Bragg today, most of whom deployed and fought as part of the surge.”

McCain closed by saying that over 4,000 “brave young Americans gave their lives,“ and that it is ”clear” that the president’s decision to pullout of Iraq was purely politically motivated:

“Over 4,000 brave young Americans gave their lives in this conflict. I pray that their sacrifice is not in vain. I hope that their families will not mourn the day that their sons and daughters went out to fight for freedom for the Iraqi people. Unfortunately, it is clear that this decision of a complete pullout of United States troops from Iraq was dictated by politics, and not our national security interests. I believe that history will judge this President’s leadership with the scorn and disdain it deserves.”

The video follows and a full transcript of McCain’s remarks can be read here.